230433 Adapting Shakespeare to the Screen (S) (SoSe 2025)

Adapting a Shakespeare play to the screen seems like a self-defeating endeavour: Unless you include the whole text of the play (like Kenneth Branagh did in his film of Hamlet), you have to sacrifice much of what makes the plays so unique: their language. How much of the characters' complexity can be saved if half of their lines are cut? Can the medium of film compensate for the loss of spoken language by its own specific semiotic systems? If so, how can this be achieved? What layers of meaning can film illuminate? What IS it that film directors have felt they can add to their culture's perception of a Shakespeare play by turning it into a film?
We will discuss these and other questions by looking at a few examples of single scenes and speeches (e.g. from different film adaptations of Macbeth or Henry V) and then read in full a comedy (Much Ado About Nothing) and a tragedy (King Lear) and discuss how they have been interpreted by film directors.

Requirements for participation, required level

You should have *completed* BM2 / Basis2.
If you are in the new BA (ab WS 2022/23), you *must* have passed the LPT.